I have always been a very determined, ambitious, hard working individual. My father instilled in me at an early age the importance of values and character. He valued his children’s education and accepted nothing but the best. He was a real father. I can remember him checking my homework and not telling me which ones were wrong making me go back through the entire assignment again until it was perfect. Cartoons in the morning, don’t try it. I think he used to check the temperature on the TV to see if we turned it on (more likely, I left the TV turned on the channel with the cartoons). There was no such thing as not having homework in the afternoon. Either you were going to sit at the kitchen table and stare at him for an hour or you were going to check a book out at the library to read after school. I can’t even talk about the teenage years. Imagine sneaking in past curfew to your dad sleeping in my bed. The horror!! Not in my Father’s House, no way, you can try it if you want. He was on his job. He provided discipline, order and respect. There were defined expectations, rules and boundaries. He wasn’t perfect, but he did a great job on the important father stuff. The important values lessons that money can’t buy. My mother is an amazing woman. She married my dad when she was 18 years old, raised two kids who never needed or wanted for anything. She started three successful businesses in three different industries on pure will, whit and determination. My mom can add a couple of chapters to Donald Trump’s “Art of the Deal”, LOL. If she was afforded the opportunities she sacrificed to give to me, I am sure she would be on the Forbes 500 list by now. God blessed me with amazing parents. I couldn’t imagine being them; married at 18; two kids at 22; I had a wonderful childhood and I really didn’t have anything to complain about. I mean, come on. I had two parents, I went to a nice school and I never wanted or needed anything. I say all this to say that I am the average American woman. My journey until now has been pretty mundane. Normal. I don’t have daddy issues, I don’t come from a broken home and I know GOD. I pray, I treat those as I want to be treated. So it eluded me until recently, why GOD was punishing me by subjecting me to the annuals of a bad marriage. I couldn’t figure it out. What could have possibly done to deserve this? The relationship autopsy had begun. So what went wrong? I worked so hard. I did all the stuff on the good wife checklist. So what the heck happened? I went back to the beginning, trying to diagnose when and where this went wrong. My parents are happily divorced and the better for it. They stayed together almost 25 years, enough time for my brother and I to leave home. Although their decision was honorable; they are always consequences to bad decisions. I can remember my brother and me intervening;”why don t you all get a divorce?” we asked on more than once occasion. So when I suggest the relationship autopsy go back to the beginning, I mean the very beginning

Damn, what did I do? In hindsight, it’s pretty obvious. We met online and got married after dating for 8 months. See when you type it in print, its looks obvious—DUH. Even in the midst of the autopsy, I’m still searching for a specific cause of the illness, trying to revive the patient before the pastor comes in and prays the last rites. Most women I know are in pursuit of success in three areas of their lifecycle: 1) education/career, 2) stability/Love and 3) marriage/children. Although we are in constant pursuit of the trifecta, few attain success in all three of these areas. So when I met my husband and we instantly fell in love, I thought, yes, my prayers have been answered. We were great together in the beginning. Our mistake, we both naively jumped into the most important earthly relationship of our lives on a whim. See when you type it in print in looks obvious.

When doing the relationship last rites, we all have to go back to the beginning…I had to look deep, really deep and ask myself some serious questions. One question kept popping in my head as I dissected our marriage and tried to get to the root of the problem; the one question I asked my husband to ask himself; the one question we should all ask ourselves. Do we even know what a healthy relationship looks likes? What does it feel like? I am not speaking on the temporary satisfaction of material comforts found in relationships; stability, comfort, passion, sex. I’m speaking of something deeper, something more profound. The total emotional, spiritual and physical connection to another human being that a real relationship brings. Marriage is a symbiotic state of being. You can’t be halfway in a marriage. It’s the total and complete commitment of yourself to another human person. Marriage takes maturity, sacrifice, hard work and commitment to a purpose and a person other than yourself. If you’re a selfish person, you’re never going to be in a healthy relationship. Genesis 2:24 says a man will leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Even the bible, the undisputed word of the almighty Jehovah Yahweh, GOD himself, describes marriage as a traumatic experience. A man leaves of his own will to CLEAVE, defined in the dictionary as the following;

1. To split with or as if with a sharp instrument.

2. To make or accomplish by or as if by cutting:

3. To pierce or penetrate:

Sounds painful. Imagine a doctor performing a complicated, intricate surgery without having formal training? No medical school, no apprenticeship. Nothing; He has a general idea of how to do the surgery because he thinks he has seen it done before; his doctor friends have done this surgery and he’s seen it on TV a bunch of times. Sounds silly. No one would let this person come anywhere near them with a scalpel. However, most people are using this approach to marriage and relationships. If we were totally honest with ourselves, most people don’t know what a healthy relationship is because not only have they never been in a health relationship themselves, they have no first hand direct knowledge that such a thing exists and what it entails to get there. We are trying to perform cleavectomies on one another with no idea how to do it. How can you become one flesh with someone else without the slightest idea how? How could we? Nearly two thirds of all marriages in America end in divorce. Over half of children in American are born to single mothers and nearly seventy five percent of African American children are born out of wedlock. What does this have to do with anything some may say? Don’t beat up on the single parents, blah, blah blah. Yes, there are millions of women holding it down and millions of men who are working their butts off to be good providers and fathers. But this is a blog and my opinion and if we want to be honest, then you can stop reading here (But please, visit www.lamatrixlifestyle.com for high style, for low prices). My husband challenges me to keep it real so let’s all be real. You can’t model a healthy relationship with yourself and four eyes on a child are always better than two. Unfortunately, too few men and women have had unhealthy relationships modeled for them and they are not modeling healthy relationships and behaviors for their children. Look at us, most of our parents are divorced or unhappily married. Even if we came from a wonderful home, whets the likelihood of us meeting someone who has had similar positive relationship experiences? Slim at best. By the time we run into Mr. or Mrs. Right, our life experiences and everyday situations has conditioned most men and women to be suspicious of the person they are suppose to trust the most, conditioned by Our life experiences and environment to not trust anyone but ourselves. I was watching documentary, Tyson the other night. I didn’t really want to watch it, but I’m glad I did. This is an excellent movie in that its one man’s take on how his life experiences influenced his successes and failures, including his marriages and relationships with women. One of the most interesting points was Tyson’s contention his false conviction destroyed his trust in not only the legal system, but in people. Let’s examine this a little closer; although most of us have not been traumatized by such an experience, all of our life experiences, good or bad, influence the fundamental foundations our relationships with the people close to us, especially in marriages. Most people, specifically in African American communities have had some trauma, single parent households, death or incarceration of a parent, physical and or sexual abuse, even bad relationships. Lead to people not trusting those around them even if there is no logical rhyme or reason. We just don’t know any better because know one taught us; when you do meet someone and try to make it work, the voices start taking over…..You know the ones……..the ghosts of relationships past. Don’t let them get too close, you don’t want to be hurt again. “This man or this woman doesn’t have my best interest at heart. I can’t trust him/her…She/he wants something from me..I don’t need him/her..She’s/He’s just like my ex-/my mother/ my father…He/she really doesn’t love me…She/he doesn’t respect me…He/She’s a liar…cheat….He’s/She’s cheating……cheating…..cheating….cheating…

So here we are…Bad cleavectomies all around. . The worst type of environment a human being can possibly be in is a bad relationship and now, the bad relationship cycle. Most men and women have more baggage then the belly of a 747. At the beginning of a real relationship, we totally invest ourselves emotional, spiritual, psychologically and physically in the other person, especially if you’re in LOVE. Love. Whew. When you invest yourself into people and they take, and take, there are less of you to invest; it’s the same with Love. By the time its “time” to love that for real someone, You’re suspicious, you’re unsure. By now, you’re at the beginning of the bad relationship lifecycle. I mean, you’ve seen this movie before and you don’t like the ending. Your both all in. By now, all the Men are walking around, blasting Jay-Zs, I got 99 problems…..Woman are singing anything by Mary J Bilge (Pre “The Breakthrough album of course). For the 75% of men and women who aren’t married, most are like bump this, my cleavectomy is reversible, if I separate from this fool, and the scars will heal. We’re not married; then there’s the 25% of unlucky bastards who are married. Don’t get me wrong, there are some very happy married people, but statistically speaking, happiness for the masses of married people is elusive for most. Why is something everyone craves so badly so hard to achieve? Based on my own experiences, I have to ask myself why? I believe most of us are experiencing the side effects of bad cleavectomies, especially in black America. In black America, married people are rare and happily married people are rarer. A majority of people enter marriage for the obvious reasons; love and commitment. Unfortunately, we have tried to enter into healthy relationships with no idea of what these looks like because we have no touchstone of reality. If boys don’t see their mothers treated with dignity, respect; revered and put on a pedestal; loved and cherished, it’s hard to contextualize and model these behaviors with their girlfriends and wives. If girls are betrayed by their fathers and men in their lives, if their bitter and angry, some for good reason, it’s hard for them to trust, love and respect a man if these have been taken over and over again. I say, HARD, not impossible because even though men and women have personal experiences that shape their perspectives, we have to stop being victims of the ghosts of relationship past. I’ve recognized that my relationship is dying from a festering infection caused by a bad cleavectomy. We got married and didn’t know a thing about the other person; we didn’t check our baggage at the door. We both have had our experiences of relationships past. Some traumatic, some that have left scars that are still healing. Unfortunately for us, we forced a bad cleavectomy and have spent the last 4 years fighting an infection caused by mistrust and suspicion. Root cause: congenital defect—we had no idea of what we were getting ourselves into and thought we could treat the illness ourselves with roots and herbs. Treatment—Prayer and professional counseling, Prognosis; Critical but stable condition.

Why is this so important?

Silly me. I think relationships are important. Health relationships and marriage should be promoted as good public health policy. God in his infinite wisdom, I believe, wanted to highlight the importance of relationships by its proximity to the beginning of his word (Genesis) (just like he puts the end of days at the end—First and the Last books). God started the story of Adam and Eve in the first three chapters of the first book. God also talks extensively throughout the bible on the subjects of marriage, love and sacrifice. All Christians know John 3:16 says, God so LOVED the world he GAVE his only begotten son so whoever BELIEVED in him should not perish but have ever lasting life. Love, giving, belief, sacrifice. All the foundation of strong marriages and relationships. In my line of work, I see the detrimental effects of bad relationships every day. I want to go on the record and say that “Bad relationships are one of the leading causes of death among blacks.” The leading cause of death among blacks in America is stroke, heart disease and high blood pressure. Stressors…HIV are the leading cause of death among women 25-44. Nearly two-thirds of HIV diagnosis among black women and caused by heterosexual sex. In most US cities, the rates of HIV among blacks are the same as some countries in Africa. In another study, when asked, people who live in areas where there is a lot of HIV, indicated that they did not know their own HIV status, did know their last partners HIV status, don’t were condoms and are in concurrent relationships. Now, this is another keep it real moment. Regardless of where you live and how much money you make, how many people exhibit these behaviors in their main land or their casual relationships? I would say most people 14-64. The rates of STDS in people aged 12-24 is between 8-14%. Why is this relevant to me? I don’t have kids; I’m in a monogamous relationship. It matters because in most cases a happy health relationship is a monogamous relationship. Right now, we have a lot to work on to be both happy and health. It matters because of the 75% of people who are single are trapped in the bad relationship lifecycle and a large proportion of the 25% of married/committed people are still swimming in that lifecycle too. This is relevant because our children and young people are mimicking our bad adult relationships, initiated into the bad relationship lifecycle by their own experiences at too early of an age. Data and statistics show children raised in negative environments will more likely model these behaviors and we are normalizing unhealthy relationships. No matter who you are how much money you make or where you live; it’s time to start doing the national relationship autopsy. How can we be better husbands/wives, boyfriends/girlfriends, mothers/fathers? How do we turn the pervasive bad relationship lifecycle into healthy relationships that are the norm, not the acceptation?

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1) <!–[endif]–>Truth and Honesty; be honest with GOD; really start your spiritual walk. Everything starts with God and ends with God. Everything you need to know is in the bible.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2) <!–[endif]–>Truth and Honesty: Be honest with yourself: Do the personality autopsy. Maybe it is you….. (Go back to the beginning to the source of your issues, process it, be conscious of it, and try to improve it).

<!–[if !supportLists]–>3) <!–[endif]–>Truth and Honesty: Is the foundation of a good relationship; It’s hard to get there if you don’t have the map. Be open to finding a guide (counselors) who can help you find the way and eventually you can walk on your own.

When I work up on the November 26^th to read the blog there were a few emotions that overcame me. Pride: My husband is an amazing person, talented, driven, ambitious and brilliant, my perfect match; He’s conscious about making a difference in the world, a Christian man who tries to live his principals through his daily walk with Christ, as most people who believe in the POWER of the blood of the lamb. Then I read some more—Appalled was the first word that came to mind—yes appalled—how could you put our business out there on the permanent information super highway??!! (For all those people who post their most intimate pictures, thoughts and activities on face book, twitter and on the internet in general, umm FYI: that NEVER goes away). “How could YOU embarrass ME like this”? “What about my career, my reputation”? I cried. I felt betrayed, my heart was broken………..But then I calmed down and realized what he is trying to do and I trusted him…..Look at that, a sign of life for the critical patient…This cleavectomy may be able to be fixed.